He said the chance of one of his officers investigating a bicycle or shed theft was “almost non-existent”.

But figures show that more than 1,260 officers on his force earned £50,000 or more over the past year, up by almost 450 on the ­previous 12 months.

Fourteen members of staff were handed pay and ­pension packages of more than £100,000.

They include Hopkins himself, who was paid £251,000 including pension payments of £46,000.

His deputy Ian Pilling is on a package of £192,000.

And eight assistant chief constables have salaries and pensions ranging from £118,000 to £153,000.

The Manchester cops are getting a £35.8 million budget boost from the Home Office this year.

Police have launched an investigation after video footage posted on social media appeared to show an officer hitting a handcuffed 17 year old boy with a truncheon.

In the 50-second video shot in Romford, east London, the boy shouts, “I am a child. You can’t do this. I’ve done nothing. He’s slapping me with a stick.”

Dawn Johnson, a witness, said, “He’s far from resisting arrest, just trying to protect himself from getting beaten.”

The Met said that the boy was stopped and searched under the Misuse of Drugs Act on Monday and was found to be in possession of class B drugs.

He was arrested for possession with intent to supply.

A 14 year old boy stopped at the same time fled but was arrested later. Both were released under investigation.

Surveillance cameras are being used in shopping centres to spy on people and work out their age and their mood so they can be targeted with the “correct” advertisements. The screens display marketing for the specific audience. Ocean Outdoor boss Tim Bleakley said, “We can measure the level of happiness or sadness.” One of its screens at Canary Wharf stated that 49 percent of people walking past that day were ‘affluent’ and earned ‘over £100,000’.

Hundreds of nurses have killed themselves in just seven years, shocking new figures revealed. Data shows that 32 suicides were recorded in 2017—down from 51 nurses aged from 20 to 64 in 2016. But during the worst year of 2014, there was more than one NHS nurse taking their own life every week.

Thousands march to Break up Britain

The demonstration is called by the All Under One Banner group. It comes after Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon, announced last week that legislation would be passed to allow a second independence referendum by 2021.

But this does not guarantee it will happen.

The Tories have already said they will not consent to an independence referendum. And the Labour Party also opposes it.

Mass defiance will be needed to break such resistance.

There is increasing frustration at the Scottish National Party’s slowness in confronting the Westminster government.

But the demand for independence needs to be linked to calls for a Scotland without austerity, racism and nuclear weapons.

Council’s speculation ‘generally poor choice’

A local council has been criticised by its auditors after spending almost £400 million on a property investment.

Spelthorne borough council in Surrey bought the BP Centre in Sunbury for £385 million in September 2016 using a government loan.

KPMG identified “significant weaknesses” in the council’s financial processes surrounding the investment. The auditor warned that the decision making was “generally poor and difficult to follow”, meaning it was “difficult to identify whether all the risks associated with such a large and significant transaction had been fully considered and mitigated”.

It was one of the more extreme cases of a council betting on the property market to replace revenue lost in government cuts.